science!!!

so much science today that it warrants three exclamation points!!!

first, the arguably least science-y of the three, they've apparently found the embalmed head of king henri the iv, assassinated in 1610. it's been passed down through the generations by collectors, and was identified using radiocarbon dating, computer facial reconstruction, and through several distinguishing marks, including an ear-piercing and a facial lesion.

science!

in other science news, they've discovered a particular type of snail that glows under the right conditions, the Hinea brasiliana, which uses its creepy radioactive-like glow to scare off predators. part of the "clusterwink snail" family, its the snail itself that emits the glow, and uses its shell to disperse the light across a larger surface.

science!!

and apparently? there are volcanoes on saturn's moon titan that, rather than lava, emit ice (and hydrocarbons).

i smell sci-fi channel original movie!!! (note: i refuse to call it "syfy" other than in this quick note explaining that i will not do so.) corin nemec, clear your schedule.

(in other news, it only took 16 pages of images in google image search to hit one that was very mildly nsfw...)

mosca melenuda terrible

i was having a hard time finding a science news story that i found interesting and entertaining enough to write about tonight.

sure, scientists at the university of colorado discovered (and published in the journal Science Translational Medicine) that stem cell injections in mice can not only boost leg muscle, but prevent age deterioration (bringing me one step closer to finally having "ups"), and that's amazing...

but it just wasn't what i was looking for.

until i found this:

"Africa's 'terrible hairy fly' found in Kenya"

yes, that's right.

a terribly hairy fly.

apparently, scientists haven't seen this fly in the wild in 62 years, but even more amazing? it can't actually fly. Mormotomyia hirsuta is approximately one centimeter long (the common house fly grows to be 0.8-1.2cm), covered in tiny yellow hairs, and has non-functioning wings.

it's also very likely that it only lives in a single rock-cleft in uzaki hill, east of nairobi. why, you ask? well, the hairy fly has a predilection for breeding in bat guano, something that this rock cleft is in no shortage of.

not much else is known due to the extreme rarity of the fly, but this much is known, and this much is disappointing:

there is currently no known luchador wrestling under the name: "mosca melenuda terrible."

(though a google image search for "terrible hairy fly" DID eventually net this:)


to make up for that, here's a picture of a piglet squid: